In recent years, the preference for purely private funding and ownership of telecommunications networks has given way to a 'new wisdom' that some form of public funding is now necessary if faster and more capacious Next Generation Networks (NGNs) are to be constructed in a timely fashion. The...

The political perception of New Zealand's broadband market performance as 'poor' has underpinned many significant changes to the telecommunications policy and regulatory environments since 2001. Most recently, this has been manifested in substantial government subsidies by way of public-private...

Public policies to deploy enhanced local broadband access infrastructure in locations physically very far removed from the firms and customers with whom they transact are frequently justified by claims of increased competitiveness arising from the elimination of the ‘tyrannies of distance’....

New Zealand stands apart from its OECD counterparts as one of the few countries pursuing government investment in a nationwide fibre network. As in the past, when it stood apart with its 'light-handed' regulatory approach, New Zealand's experience can inform other jurisdictions. This paper...

After decades of liberalization of the telecommunications industry around the world and technological convergence that allows for increasing competition, sector-specific regulation of telecommunications has been on the decline. As a result, the telecommunications industry stands in the middle of...

Finland and New Zealand share many geographic, demographic and economic similarities. Their telecommunications markets also demonstrate many similarities; but behind these superficial similarities lie important structural differences that influence market performance. By tracing the evolutionary...

This paper examines the case of telecommunications sector regulation in New Zealand, and does so by providing a constructive illustration of the mutually informing use of systems methodologies and alternative systems representational tools as a means of building understanding of the dilemmas...

The current mobile ecosystem is best understood in terms of a monopolistic competition model, characterised by heterogeneous producers providing a range of differentiated products for consumers with heterogeneous preferences. Product differentiation offers producers some market power, ultimately...

Structural separation between network and retail functions is increasingly being mandated in the telecommunications sector to countervail the market power of incumbent operators. Experience of separation in the electricity sector offers insights for policy-makers considering telecommunications...

Fast internet access is widely considered to be a productivity-enhancing factor. However, despite promises of substantial gains from its deployment, the evidence from recent empirical studies suggests that the productivity gains may not be as large as originally hypothesised. If substantiated,...